Recent and ongoing changes to concealed carry laws have created situations where persons carrying a firearm are not able to bring it with them when visiting certain establishments, for example, schools and restaurants. In this situation, they must be able to leave the firearm in a vehicle while safely secured. In addition, firearm owners occasionally travel from their home to another location via an airplane. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has implemented rules for transporting firearms in luggage that require unloaded firearms to be placed in a locked, hard-sided container as checked baggage. Certain types of ammunition may be carried in the same hard-sided case as the firearm as long as the ammunition is securely packed in containers designed to carry small amounts of ammunition.
Current methods of locking firearms in a vehicle are limited to devices that severely restrict accessibility of the locked firearm in the transportation vehicle. They are bulky and can only be mounted in certain vehicles that have a large enough space to both mount the safe and open the door to access the contents, which is typically not concealed unless it is placed in the trunk. Installing a gun safe that is visible to someone outside the vehicle provides an incentive to break into the vehicle. Unfortunately, it is seldom possible to install existing gun safes in a concealed location, for example, under a seat, because the doors open in a way that makes such an installation impossible. Due to size and accessibility issues, prior art gun safes also cannot be mounted in a concealed way unless they are in a trunk of a vehicle. However, leaving a vehicle to lock a firearm up in a trunk can potentially reveal to anyone who may be watching that a firearm will be left in an untended vehicle, increasing chances for theft.
Thus, a need exists for a vehicle safe that can be flexibly mounted in a concealed location within the passenger area of a wide variety of vehicles. There is a further need for a vehicle safe that can be concealed under a seat or in a console of a vehicle while still providing convenient and discrete access to the contents of the safe without revealing the presence of the firearm to persons outside the vehicle.